1000HourDay.com [visit 2005 site]

W... What is this? Is this some kind of a joke? A practical joke? Is Victoria Island just toying with us, or did the unthinkable just happen? Was Victoria Island actually KIND to us today? Surely not. But, we can't ignore it, we can't stop grinning, everything went so suspiciously in our favor today. "Oh, SUCH a good day!" I forget how many times we have said that to each other today. Lets break it down, and revisit each joyous element of Day 35.

So we started the day on the top of the Plateau, with the first little stream less than 1km from us, which would ultimately flow into and combine forces with other streams and trickle by trickle, become The Kuujjua River - which we hope to be a 100km conveyor belt to speed us on our way. We woke on time (first miracle), and ate breaky outside enjoying an unheard of continuation of yesterdays perfect sunny, summer weather (miracle two), added a few extra bandage tourniquets to our Kevlar covers, and set off towards the creek, downhill. The downhill was just steep enough for the PAC to hold it's own momentum but not accelerate, allowing us to walk freely with almost slack harnesses for much of the way (Ignoring the odd short section of mud but then come on, fair's fair.) When we got to the stream, it was the kind that could be crossed without our boots flooding even, which was a little disappointing as we were still entertaining the outlandish notion that we might be able to 'get in and paddle' from there. But considering as it was only 20cm deep at the best of times, and its meandering route was not exactly efficient, it was not hard to tear ourselves away and continue our downhill haul directly to where another creek was supposed to join forces a km or so away.

We approached this river intersection full of excitement. Would it now maybe be flowing enough to follow? Our attention was held for about 5 minutes as we watched, transfixed, as a caribou in the distance leapt and sprang around as though mad, and then bolted, streaking across the tundra unnaturally fast, pausing only to resume it's bizarre dancing. Whacko. Almost as if it was being driven insane by unseen tormentors (Mosquitoes? But we didn't see any.) As we hauled closer, the terrain changed dramatically, and we found ourselves hauling through the Sahara Desert. Sand, all around. But not soft sink-in kinda sand, but compacted firm sand designed to be hauled over (miracle three). With the sun still smiling down upon us, we reached the intersection of the rivers, and in doing so, we crossed the state/territory border, crossing from Canada's 'Nunavut' into 'North West Territories'. If that's not reason enough to celebrate by breaking open a 2nd block of daily chocolate rations I don't know what is. We drew a line in the sand, scribbled NUNAVUT and N.W.T on their respective sides, and savored the creamy rich taste of the melting chocolate, which tasted even better than normal because a) the temperature was now 10 deg C and colder than this choc starts to loose taste, and b) because we knew we really shouldn't have stolen the extra block of choc. What a moment. A few puffy, cotton like clouds floated around idly as we walked over to the union of the streams. Combined, the water rippled and picked up its pace, deepened, and snaked off Westwards, the sunlight dancing on the gently rippling, sandy bottom. "I wonder if there are any..." At this moment a small fish darted across in front of us from one shadowy pool to another. Miracle four, and five - the prospect of being able to fish as we cruise down the river is surely worth two normal miracles. Loving life, we enjoyed our nut break talking excitedly about if we should try and go river-mode from here on.

We decided to do it. However, as there was only 30min left before lunch break I thought of a great delay tactic. "Let's go for a swim!" Clark looked at the patches of snow on the banks, and sensibly decided to abstain, but generously offering "But, if you want to, by all means go ahead. I'll film it." So I pulled off my arctic primaloft extra warm jacket, beanie, thermals and after explaining to camera that having not had a shower in over a month I was going to take a quick dip, I plunged into a slightly deeper pool on the side of the river in my Skins half-tights. 'Quick' dip was certainly the key word, and watching the video replay it's quite amazing to see how I manage to bounce out of the water and apparently run across the surface back to shore before my initial splash hit the water. It was invigorating to say the least. Once hypothermia set in and I became immune to the cold, I had a quick rub-down in the stream again and then spent the next ten minutes leaping, prancing and running frantically around trying to dry off. My uncanny resemblance to the insane caribou did not go unnoticed by Clark. Still, it felt great, and did the trick - it was now lunch time.

I forget what it was, but we found something else to celebrate during lunch (reaching the river was it?) and decided we deserved an extra peanut butter wrap each. Bliss.

We dug out the Ortlieb drybag with our 'River Gear' in it - most importantly our Gore-Tex® drysuits, booties and cool neoprene 'glacier gloves' and converted ourselves to water-mode, our drysuits zipping closed with a satisfying click. Its an awesome feeling, being in a drysuit, you feel utterly impenetrable, and we harnessed up and marched directly into the river.

At first, the river wasn't deep enough to float our PAC and we simply hauled it along, sloshing our way through knee deep water until, around a corner, it shelved off and we found ourselves bobbing around like marshmallow men, buoyed by all the air in our drysuits, and the PAC rose off the bottom and all together we drifted westward. That is to say, us both, as well as all our 400kg-ish of gear, moved westward toward the far side of the island, without us having to burn a single calorie of energy. Miracle six! We hoisted ourselves onto the PAC and whipped out the paddles, and spent the next 15 minutes trying all sorts of different configurations and techniques of paddling, punting the bottom, half hopping off the PAC when it got shallow etc, and generally learning how to control and maneuver our giant amphibious beast around shallows and bends. The river really was a little shallow on average, and for the first section we were rolling perhaps 50% of the way. However we could only laugh when we came to our first mini gravel rapid / shallow, something that would have forced a kayaker to drag or portage, we simply hopped out, clipped back into our hauling trace and the PAC just rolled up out of the water like a giant salamander, rolled up and over the dry bits, and slipped back into the flow on the far side. Never has our acronym for PAC (Paddleable Amphibious Cart) ever felt more appropriate.

The river spat us out at the first lake, leaving us with a km or so of flat, still, water to somehow cross before it flowed onwards again out the far side. We had been secretly dreading this part, fearing we'd have to haul around the convoluted shoreline at wading depth, as actual paddling a PAC in still water was as yet still an untried and likely impractically slow torture. We stayed clipped in and walked boldly out towards the centre of the lake. The icy (literally) water rose to our waist height and, then, rose no further. We looked around suspiciously but kept hauling, ignoring the inevitable. But it just never got any deeper. We soon found ourselves in the middle of the lake, perhaps almost a km from shore, still hauling at waist height. Miracle seven When I say 'hauling', the PAC bobbed obediently just behind us, we each took one side of the short harness lines and clipped in, and just waded through the water, feeling absolutely no load behind us. In fact, it made no difference when we took turns hauling, while the other walked around taking pics of us hauling across this ocean. We'd strapped our Citizen Aqualand watches to our harness so we could just glance down to see the time, and, noticing it was nut break, an island popped up out of nowhere just to our side (miracle eight) and we simply waltzed over to it until we grounded, and had some peanuts.

It was when we got to the far side of the lake that the real fun started. The lake drained into the outflowing river, picking up pace and volume, sucking us into it. We hopped aboard HMAS Nugget and directed our efforts in trying to keep her facing down stream so that when we did ground (every minute or so) the wheels would just roll, rather than if we were broadside, in which case the wheels would likely be ripped right off and we'd sink. We got better at it, and in between, marveled at how fast the bottom was slipping past beneath us, without us having to lift a finger. It was absurd. I snatched up the GPS. 5 km/hr! We laughed aloud. "Think how far we could go in a single nut-break!" "Lets see how fast we can go if we really paddle!" 6.5 km/hr, 7... 7.6 km/hr!!! Miracle nine. That is like an entire days hauling, even before first nut break. Silently hurtling towards our goal, we slipped around corners as confused and curious musk ox and caribou watched in awe from the banks.

We can't believe our luck. Our timing is PERFECT. We guess that about 90% of the snow has melted around here, filling the rivers to maximum depth over the coming week. Miracle ten. We couldn't have timed it better if we planned it, and I assure you, we didn't. As you'll see our 'proposed route' on our tracking page does not go anywhere near The Kuujjua =)

We pulled out on the side of the river here just as it opens out into another lake, bang on 6:00 (ideal stop hauling time), and rolled about 10m up onto such a perfect patch of grassy dry tundra that would put any commercial camping ground to shame, and strung up our bear alarm, whose tent-pegs slid in effortlessly, sealing off a PERFECT end to a PERFECT day.

We feel slightly guilty, as we're sure that with such a glut of good fortune coming our way today, for the universe to be kept in balance, a LOT of people all over the world must have had a shocker of a day today, but hey. You win some, you loose some. Just so happens we won more than our fair share today. Doubtless the scales will swing back tomorrow to balance things out. We'll see - for now though, we are quietly optimistic about the river days ahead.

Tomorrow we're going to spend a few hours making our PAC ship-shape, tie all the bags in incase the netting tears, take the kevlar covers off to save them for after the river, put a tow-rope on incase we fall in and the PAC tries to get away from us etc. And then, we'll be on our merry way.

We managed 11.1km today (8.31 direct by GPS). Clark definitely noticed the fact that without being squished into boots, but instead neoprene booties - us and our feet could not be happier - who knows, Clark’s mystery swollen and pained left foot may cease with the kuujjua.

P.S. - Iridium has a cool article about us and our awesome satellite tracking system we are trailing from Global Marine Networks - read it here if you're interested: www.iridiumeverywhere.com/IE_II.html.

Our live expedition updates are written on our tiny ASUS Eee PC 900 laptops, and sent via Iridium 9505A satellite phones from Landwide Satellite Solutions, using email compression software xGate from Global mareine Networks! Thanks guys - it's the perfect set up!